Verizon has confirmed an outage affecting some of its mobile phone customers that sparked a flurry of complaints on social media about disruptions to calls, texts and their ability to access the internet.

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President and CEO Austan Goolsbee said the U.S. is currently on what he calls a “golden path.” Inflation has cooled from historic highs without the country going into a recession, and the unemployment rate is at what economists generally consider a sweet spot. Now the key is staying there.

The rate cut, the Fed’s first in more than four years, reflects its new focus on bolstering the job market, which has shown clear signs of slowing. Coming just weeks before the presidential election, the Fed’s move also has the potential to scramble the economic landscape just as Americans prepare to vote.

American consumers and home buyers, business people and political leaders have been waiting for months for what the Federal Reserve is poised to announce this week: That it’s cutting its key interest rate from a two-decade peak.

Wednesday’s report from the Labor Department showed that consumer prices rose 2.5% in August from a year earlier, down from 2.9% in July. It was the fifth straight annual drop and the smallest since February 2021. From July to August, prices rose just 0.2%.

As Chicago grapples with a nearly $1 billion budget gap in the coming year, the city shouldn’t count on the state to help fill it. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he’s “read things in the newspaper” about relief Chicago may want from the Illinois government, but at this point that’s not something his budget team is thinking about.

Both the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and the state’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability released new reports Wednesday.

Though consumer sentiment is slowly rising, a majority of Americans in some surveys still complain about elevated prices, given that the costs of such necessities as food, gas and housing remain far above where they were before the pandemic erupted in 2020.

Illinois saw 86 successful union petitions in 2023, up from 67 the year before. Those are the two highest totals in a 10-year period dating back to 2014. The prior eight years ranged from 25 to 62 successful petitions.

As of June 30, nearly half a million 401(k) accounts (497,000) had balances of $1 million or more, up 2.5% from the prior quarter. The average balance hit $1,595,200, up from $1,581,000 at the end of March, according to Fidelity’s data.

The permanent casino will be four times as big as the temporary casino now open at the Medinah Temple at Ohio Street and Wabash Avenue.

A recent court filing shows that the company is rejecting the leases of an additional 23 locations by Saturday, Aug. 31, joining the more than 100 restaurants that Red Lobster closed earlier this summer. Once complete, the chain will have around 500 outlets left — a sharp decline from the 650 it had just last year.

Kellanova was created last year when the Kellogg Co. split into two companies. Chicago-based Kellanova sells many of the former company’s most profitable brands, including Pringles, Eggo, Town House, MorningStar Farms and Rice Krispies Treats. It had net sales of more than $13 billion last year and has about 23,000 employees.

The S&P 500 jumped 2.3% for its best day since 2022 and shaved off all but 0.5% of its loss from what was a brutal start to the week. 

The S&P 500 climbed 1% to break a brutal three-day losing streak. It had tumbled a bit more than 6% on a raft of concerns, including worries the Federal Reserve had pressed the brakes too hard for too long on the U.S. economy through high interest rates in order to beat inflation.

The S&P 500 was down by 2.1% in midday trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was reeling by 763 points, or 1.9%, as of 12:20 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite slid 2.4%.